Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/365

Rh high on the legs—namely, about fourteen inches—and is a very formidable looking animal, with powerful jaws. The distribution of colours is very similar to those of the Inverness specimen described in 'The Zoologist' (2nd ser. p. 4791), but this cat is darker, and seemingly more aged. How it could have escaped for so many years is wonderful.— (Ventnor, Isle of Wight).

[We are extremely sceptical in regard to the alleged existence of Wild Cats in the South of England at the present day, and, notwithstanding the colour and large size of many of the animals killed, we cannot help regarding them as of hearth-rug ancestry. We should like to know what our readers in the New Forest have to say on the subject.—]

—On visiting the British Museum, a few days since, I carefully looked at the different species of Porphyrio in the National Collection, the result being that I satisfied myself that my Irish example is not the small Porphyrio Martiniquii, but the South European P. veterum. I have read Mr. Smith's remarks on the specimen of this Porphyrio obtained in Somersetshire, and as he objects to regard it as a straggler to this country, he is bound to bear the onus probandi, and to bring forward something more than a mere surmise that it is only a bird that has escaped from confinement. Unless, as I have already remarked, there is something altogether exceptional in the bird which is met with at large, it is, in the absence of proof to the contrary, fairly entitled to be ranked as a voluntary straggler to this country. The facilities of importation which exist at the present time, which are rendering this country what Pericles claimed Athens to be, the emporium of the whole world, and that, so far as concerns living specimens of foreign animals as well as the ordinary spoils of merchandize, must not be stretched too far to account for every unusual bird found wild in our woods and fields. To do this is greatly to destroy the romance of British Ornithology. The attitude of the ornithologist in this country should be one of general expectation. From the situation of this island, it offers a natural resting-place to birds which may have lost their reckoning in their migrations both from the Old and the New World. To pronounce, then, of any new-comer to the British list that "it is only an escape" is to cast a damper upon this expectant feeling, and to abandon the peculiar fortune with which the position of this country has enriched its naturalists. It is for this reason, chiefly, that I decline to retire from my defence of the Somersetshire Purple Gallinule, and to ask Mr. Smith to furnish proofs that the specimen in question escaped from an aviary. Does he know of any one who, residing not far from the locality of its capture, happened about that time to lose so rare a bird? Even if he did, I might enquire for certain marks of confinement which all birds, however handsomely treated in the aviary, are almost sure to exhibit; dull, soiled, or abraded plumage; less brilliancy in the coloration of the softer